Like two other refugee locations in Djibouti, Holl-Holl was an old camp that was closed in the mid-2000s, as a consequence of massive repatriations to Ethiopia and to the breakaway territory of Somaliland where the security situation has relatively improved during the last decade. Over the last 6 years, Ali Addeh Addeh was the only remaining refugee camp in Djibouti and it was initially designed for a caseload of less than 7,000 refugees. Ali Addeh was opened in 1991 to receive Somali refugees who fled civilian crisis resulting from the fall of Siad Barre’s regime and later on, it had also hosted Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees. To date, the camp counts 17,060 refugees, including 16,396 Somalis, 528 Ethiopians and 134 Eritreans while the total number of Somali refugees registered in the country amounts 18,022.
As Ali Addeh refugee camp has largely exceeded its capacity, the Governm...

Embargo: 11:30 AM CET, 18 SEPTEMBER, 2012
Somalia’s Hawa Aden Mohamed wins the 2012 Nansen Refugee Award
GENEVA, 18 September, 2012 – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced today in Geneva that this year’s Nansen Refugee Award goes to Hawa Aden Mohamed, the founder and director of the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development (GECPD) in Puntland, north-eastern Somalia. The award is given to Hawa Aden Mohamed in recognition of her exceptional, tireless and inspiring humanitarian work for Somalia’s refugee and displaced girls and women, work performed under incredibly difficult and challenging circumstances in a country battered by decades of violence, conflict and human rights abuses.
In 1954, UNHCR established the Nansen Refugee Award to promote global interest in refugees and to keep alive the spirit of Fridtjof Nansen, the first High...

Increase in registered Syrian refugees, new camps planned in Turkey and Jordan

www.unhcr.org, 31/08/2012

The number of Syrian refugees registered or assisted by UNHCR in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey has almost tripled since April 2012 and now stands at 112,000. Three quarters are women and children. This actual number of Syrian refugees is thought to be significantly higher, as many people seek to be registered only when they run out of resources.
In all four countries, many newly arriving Syrian refugees are entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, with some coming with only the clothes on their backs, and following many months of unemployment. The needs of those who arrived earlier in the year are also increasing as their savings have become depleted. At the same time, the communities supporting the refugees are increasingly feeling the strain, with the local infrastructure and resources under severe pressure, in particular water, housing, capacity of schools and health facilities...

Somali refugee population in Horn of Africa passes one million, but exodus slows

www.unhcr.org, 31/08/2012

Somalia's refugee exodus crossed a new threshold this past week, with more than a million people now having fled the country for the surrounding region, according to the latest UNHCR data. The most recent arrivals continue to cite insecurity and dwindling food resources as the main reasons for their flight.
Despite passing the one million mark, our data for the main arrival countries of Kenya and Ethiopia also shows lower but steady numbers of people leaving Somalia. In the first six months of 2012 some 30,000 refugee arrivals were registered in the region. The conflict and the worst drought in decades forced more than 137,000 Somalis to leave their homes during the first six months of last year. For the year as a whole some 294,000 refugees registered in camps in the surrounding region.
The situation in most of the southern and central part of Somalia remains fluid and unstable, ...

Conditions in South Sudan’s refugee camps have continued to worsen over the past few days under the strain of continuing large refugee inflows and flooding from torrential rains. The health situation has at this point become UNHCR’s priority concern, and we are watching closely for possible outbreaks of disease.
Health actors and the UN refugee agency are undertaking a mass health screening to obtain better data on the actual mortality rates and vaccination coverage rates across all refugee sites in South Sudan’s Upper Nile and Unity States. These surveys are still not complete. In light of the weak state of the population on arrival, large scale programmes are required to immediately address their needs and prevent people’s health from deteriorating further. In remote places such as the borders of Unity and Upper Nile states, the challenge for us is equaled by very few other...

This past weekend UNHCR successfully completed the voluntary repatriation of 38 Tanzanian refugees from Zanzibar who had been residing in Mogadishu for the past 11 years.
The group, comprising 12 families, were flown on two special UNHCR-chartered flights from Mogadishu to Zanzibar on Friday 6 July. From there, seven families were accompanied back to their home villages on Pemba Island following a short ferry ride, while five families opted to remain and re-start their lives on the main Zanzibar island of Unguja.
The returning refugees have been given a reintegration package including a cash grant, four months’ food supply, as well as basic shelter and household items. Together with the Tanzanian authorities, UNHCR will be monitoring the returned families to ensure their successful reintegration.
The heads of households were young men when they left Zanzibar in January 2001, f...

Six months ago refugees began fleeing Mali to Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso. Today, political instability in Bamako and insecurity in northern Mali continue to trigger the flight of thousands of refugees to neighbouring countries and other parts of Mali. Over 365,000 people are estimated to have been displaced since January.
Over the past month, the major influx has been into Mauritania, with 15,000 people having arrived in the last two weeks of June and arrivals since then continuing at between 200 and 500 refugees a day. Most of the new arrivals come from the Timbuktu region. They cite recent armed confrontation between Islamist groups and Tuareg rebels as the reason for their flight.
Smaller numbers of refugees are continuing to arrive in Burkina Faso and Niger. They warn that recent instability in the north, especially in the Gao area, could result in new arrivals over the...

Conflict is normally cited by displaced Somalis as the main reason for flight, but in recent weeks we have seen an increase in IDPs and refugees also citing difficulty in providing for themselves. Over the past seven weeks we have registered some 6,000 Somalis who have cited such difficulties - usually arising from meager seasonal rains and resulting food insecurity. The majority are from Somalia’s Bay, Lower Juba and Bakool regions.
For 2012 to date, UNHCR has recorded 13,000 such displacements. However in May alone we registered 4,400. Insecurity is still the major cause of displacement inside Somalia, accounting for around 146,000 displacements so far this year.
In Lower Juba region, people are moving to the towns of Diif, Qoqani, Tabta and Dobley in search of water and pasture. They have settled in areas around Dobley and Diif, close to the border. Many are now integrated wit...

UNHCR warns that South Sudan situation is critical, appeals to donors for urgent new help

www.unhcr.org, 31/08/2012

UNHCR on Thursday appealed to donors to urgently provide additional funding for its operations to help Sudanese refugees in South Sudan and neighbouring Ethiopia. Currently there are some 162,500 refugees in South Sudan and 36,500 in Ethiopia. The contributions we have received for South Sudan have been exhausted.
The situation for refugees in South Sudan is among the most critical UNHCR now faces anywhere. At the time of our initial appeal in January we had planned on the basis of a refugee population in South Sudan not exceeding 135,000 people. However, the sharp surge in arrivals in recent weeks in Upper Nile state in particular has seen this figure being exceeded by nearly 30,000 people, and with arrivals continuing at an average rate of 1000 a day.
Many of the new arrivals are in desperate condition, and large numbers of children need urgent intervention to address malnourishm...

We are very concerned about reports we are receiving concerning the tense and fragile security situation in the areas affected by the recent violence in Rakhine State. Even though the situation appears calm, we are still getting reports of violence and new displacements.
In the days ahead, anyone fleeing the situation in Myanmar or being pushed back will also face increasingly hazardous and rough seas, with swell heights reaching three to four metres in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal.
Meanwhile, UNHCR aid is reaching affected communities after we re-deployed a team to Sittwe to join other staff who remained in Rakhine State throughout the latest events.
The number of people estimated to have been affected by the violence continues to grow, with latest unofficial estimates close to 90,000, including those displaced and those too frightened to leave their homes. Initial es...